Minke magic, Minke mystery at Strumble!

Having heard of Kens incredible morning cetacean fest several of us, Holly Lloyd Fran and self could not resist the temptation to head on down to Strumble to see what we could see.we set up just below the Lookout socially distanced and as  we did so,  both Holly and Fran let out gasps of amazement as a Minke surfaced just a couple of hundred meters away, Fran's first ever Minke!

Lloyd and I missed it! but could see the footprint on the flat calm surface....

For half an hour we strained our eyes searching for the elusive rorqual At about twenty five feet long and weighing in at over ten tonnes you would think re-sighting it on a mainly flat sea would be easy. you would be wrong!

We had just about given up and were concentrating on some ridiculously distant porpoises, when Fran called out something big we all tried to get on it and lo and behold , at least a couple of miles out...

And so it continued for the next ninety minutes, distant porpoises distant Minke's and odd porpoises. all the minke sightings of animals heading right to left...Thrilling stuff but then we saw one heading back our way...

And then another surfaced much closer!

And then even closer, (Holly's shot!)

And then closer still!!! (image Rich Crossen)

And so that was the magic! but the mystery was how many Minke's did we actually see? Definitely two seen well apart from each other, but there could have been half a dozen.I guess we will never know but one thing is for certain it was a cetacean spectacular none of us will ever forget!